Preserved Wook is an oldtime New England railway engineman who calls to life again the history & technology not only of the steam locomotive in the LAST Steam Age of the Old Atlantic West, but of many a wonderful way of getting around in the World, in a better time when travel indeed was for the few…and the very few!

Flying the F4U Corsair

This shipboard fighter was hard to accomodate to carriers at first because of the greater size & heavier wing-loading; this gave more inertia to the faster-landing aircraft & accordingly carrier deck gear had to be re-done to take the gaff.

….is similar to the previous posting about flying the P-47 Thunderbolt; it makes the point that, quite unlike the P-47, the Corsair stalled quickly with controls that suddenly became heavy & giving little advance warning in the way flutter & mushing. Accordingly, the Corsair spun out quite readily & the pilot in transition training had to master spin-recovery right away, as well as stall-prevention.

The footage showing this aspect of Corsair operation again is clear & as good as that of the P-47 training film